Highway Companion, Tom Petty’s third solo album and first in a dozen years, is a timeless album in regards to the passing of time. A constant companion at the road of rock n’ roll, Petty, says Rolling Stone, is “rock aristocracy”.
Four years after he took Elvis Costello’s advice and bit the music/radio biz hands that have concurrently fed and frustrated him for decades at the scabrous The Last DJ, Tom Petty returned to the studio with more for my part introspective matters on his mind. Reuniting with producer/Wilbury sideman Jeff Lynne sans Heartbreakers for his third solo release proper, the veteran doesn’t such a lot retool his trademark sound here as allow it the freedom to roam. The sonic landscape here is bluesier (“Saving Grace’s opening shuffle, the haunting “Turn This Car Around”) and more country-fried (the twangy energy of the blue collar lament “Big Weekend”), a return to familiar roots that produces subtly different results this time around. That sensibility now seasons songs as different as the stoned-elegant languor of “Night Driver” and the playful “Jack,” where Petty and Lynn give a knowing nod and wink to the recent pop milieu. The stately, pop-perfect closer “Golden Rose” may lean at the Beatle-y side in their familiar sound, but it is a cliché the duo use both sparingly and shrewdly during, forging one of the vital veteran’s most free-ranging and warmly satisfying efforts in a decade. Jerry McCulley

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